of government to the memorial.  It was there resolved, that “as it was too late to send troops to the islands, the best way of preserving them would be to bring the question of the Slave-trade to an immediate issue; and that it was the duty of the government, if they regarded the safety of the islands, to oppose the abolition of it.”  Accounts of all these proceedings were inserted in the public papers.  It is needless to say that they were injurious to our cause.  Many looked upon the abolitionists as monsters.  They became also terrified themselves.  The idea with these was, that unless the discussion on this subject was terminated, all would be lost.  Thus, under a combination of effects arising from the publication of the Rights of Man, the rise and progress of the French revolution, and the insurrections of the Negros in the different islands, no one of which events had any thing to do with the abolition of the Slave-trade, the current was turned against us; and in this unfavourable frame of mind many members of parliament went into the House, on the day fixed for the discussion, to discharge their duty with respect to this great question.

On the eighteenth of April Mr. Wilberforce made his motion.  He began by expressing a hope, that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction of the truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the Slave-trade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and religion, but by sound policy.  He stated that he should argue the matter from evidence.  He adverted to the character, situation, and means of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner.

He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade.  Captain Wilson and Captain Hills, of His Majesty’s navy, and Mr. Dalrymple of the land service, had concurred in stating, that in the country contiguous to the river Senegal, when slave-ships arrived there, armed parties were regularly sent out in the evening, who scoured the country, and brought in their prey.  The wretched victims were to be seen in the morning bound back to back in the huts on shore, whence they were conveyed, tied hand and foot, to the slave-ships.  The design of these ravages was obvious, because, when the Slave-trade was stopped, they ceased.  Mr. Kiernan spoke of the constant depredations by the Moors to procure slaves.  Mr. Wadstrom confirmed them.  The latter gentleman showed also that they were excited by presents of brandy, gunpowder, and such other incentives; and that they were not only carried on by one community against another; but that the Kings were stimulated to practise them, in their own territories, and on their own subjects:  and in one instance a chieftain, who, when intoxicated, could not resist the demands